Ben Russell

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_by_committee

This project has been pushing us all to expand. Mesh, Textures, Systems Scripting and Gizmo have all been expanding and evolving in parallel. It's all coming together now as a very tidy package, it's pushed us all to work and think harder, we've covered a lot of ground and learnt lessons that apply directly to future projects especially regarding Systems Scripting. I find myself having finally matured Gizmo to the point where it's compelling to use, I don't get to use it much! A lot of the AOM-compliance stuff that Cameron has brought to fruition hasn't been done to this level in Gizmo alone by anyone else yet as far as I know. I still look at a 747 project with respect, but every day breaks it down into smaller more manageable pieces.

@WombatBoy; thanks for clearing that up.. That's what I wanted to say...

Now model and texture me a gauge that changes the entire symbology paradigm and we'll talk about upgrading your accommodations.

The "Gizmo debug code" Goran refers to is a function that forces X-Plane to yield control of the CPU and go to sleep for N milliseconds. This keeps the CPU cooler, the fans quieter, and the rest of the OS and applications FAR more responsive, this allows better multi tasking and faster revision cycles as the artists can continue to use Photoshop/Blender/etc at full speed and crisp response latency. The code is exactly one line, and without removing it Goran cant give you a true FPS reading. As an example, I'm currently using this same function (gizmo.sleep(N)) with the Cirrus Jet to force my X-Plane FPS down to 22-25. If I take it out, my FPS triples to 75-80.

...just ignore him, he has no idea what he's talking about. Ever. In any of his posts.

It's called "test content" and is merely there to fill out the layout a bit. Traditionally we use the Lorem Ipsum Delorem passages but in this instance I did not. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorem_ipsum Nothing is seriously wrong. Its a skeleton by design, and will likely remain that way for quite some time.

To make ground breaking stuff in X-Plane the first thing you should do is throw out all the rule books and think outside the box. Throwing stones is easy. Actually fixing the .acf file and sending that back to the authors for true constructive critique is much much harder. ..Looking forward to seeing fatherjacks patched ACF flight-model in a future episode.

The BK-117 is a real joy to fly too, challenging - yet stable enough to be rewarding.

Cameras don't take stunning pictures, people do. And these are some gorgeous shots in the right place at the right time.

The scope creep of iOS was addressed at length in Ben S' blog, the masses were rather vocal in their concerns on this issue. A good iOS game is a license to print money. The risk of porting to iOS with Apples full support and guidance thrown at you to make it happen vs The risk of taking out a "huge loan" in the middle of the GFC when one of the worlds biggest and best Marketing companies has just canned their entire competing division...

"here, try this new game i got on my phone today for $10... it lets you fly stuff, just twist the phone around and try not to crash..." <insert 5 minutes of laughter here> "hey, i got this new "flight simulator" ... come around to my place one night and i'll set up my joystick, teach you what 10 buttons do, try and help you fly for a bit and you can see if you cant crash, but if you want a copy of it for yourself you'll have to wait two weeks+ for postage as you cant buy it online and i cant copy it for you." 'whats a flight simulator?' "it lets you play a game where you fly around..." 'does it let me shoot stuff?' "no... its more about teaching real pilots" 'yeah id rather watch LOST, thanks anyway.' ....Yep, iOS was a really bad marketing move. In this, the day of social networking and viral advertising, you advocate, what, advertising in a printed magazine that costs me $15+ to buy? Advertising on TV that no one in the demographic even watches? ... and if they do, it's probably a rip, or an itunes copy of the series with no ads in it anyway. Blogs, youtube and -in your face- mobile gaming and content is exactly where it's at.

I concur with Tom.

Please post a URL so that new users can jump directly and easily to the content.

http://forums.x-plane.com STOP trolling.

I brought NMEA and GPS output to X-Plane, before X-Plane had it built in. The procedure for the 496 was to connect it to a serial cable then put the GPS into "simulation" or "demo" mode. I think you might've disconnected an antenna somewhere too, it's been several years since I spoke about this. When placed in that mode the 496 would start reading the NMEA GPS stream from the serial cable. Does the 696 have any references to being able to be used as a training aid with a simulated GPS source? What X-Plane offers is mostly irrelevant at this point, what matters is determining if the 696 allows it at all. Garmin moved all their stuff to a proprietary USB-cable based protocol as far as I know. If there's at least an option on the device or in its literature, or you can find another example of one being used in this manner anywhere then you have some hope. Ross Park setup a page to cover various aspects of working with external GPS applications/devices and X-Plane. On that page you will find my plugin "XNO2". The page is here: http://ross-park.net/xgps/

2nd post refers explicity to the ad and only the ad. 4th makes reference to auto translators. 5th makes a jab at the level of care and attention referring back to the ad again which is no more than half an hours work to rewrite from the translation so that you the customer are given a clear and coherent description of the product you're about to purchase. Translating a manual is a serious chunk of work. Translating a 1 page advertisement summary is not. I still say it's sub par on the behalf or the merchant, not the producer.

Have you actually seen the manuals Ben? Have you actually read this thread and understood the context of my reply, Dozer?

You remind me of an ungrateful child picking olives and tomatoes out of a free feast.

Love the white belly versions!

Rexx flight plan: advertise no stop overs, charge higher rates for said, then divert with no notice to the passengers and do a 1 hour stop over and aggravate all the passengers as we bake in the can with no systems on for 45 minutes. Make sure you model steamy windows and poor rear of cabin ventilation. *laughs*

Thanks for the rest of the feedback, pretty much the direction I'm heading in... acknowledge all the issues you pointed to. The best "I wanna be like that" example I can think of is Flickr... it uses structured tagging extensively and works great. Personally, I have having to climb content trees from the root Node. I have No Idea what Schweizer build. But I know I like flying nice Helicopters... It's not an easy problem to solve on any front.

Do us all a favour and stop trolling about BitTorrent. It's not happening, ever.

File managers on all operating systems work in vertical column format. A vertical scan for alphabetised items is far far quicker and easier on the eye than a horizontal scan.

I had a play around with this after I put it up and while it is admittedly hard to do anything useful with it, leaving no feedback for three weeks isn't helping. Does anyone at least like the GUI? Do you all hate it? Come on... speak up or stop telling us this is what we need to do in the other threads.